Disclaimer: Excruciatingly not mine.
A/N: There had to be a reason why Alice was one of the seven Princesses of the Heart, while Pocahontas, a genuine Disney Princess, wasn't. Written for the prompt 'too late' for the KHDrabble community on LiveJournal. Once again I only just made it in under the designated word count.
The Drums of War
© Scribbler, June 2008.
"Spirits of the Earth and Sky, please don't let it be too late…"
The problem with appealing to the great spirits was that the threat wasn't anything to do with them. They had no control over human hearts, and no power over shadows.
Pocahontas gasped when she saw the battlefield. She'd expected to find her people fighting the newcomers, spears against guns and clubs against swords. What she found instead was a writhing mass of oily black creatures, skittering over bodies too crumpled and twisted to be distinguishable as pale or dark. She saw the boy who shot Kocoum vanish under a black wave, while around the fringes men ran, eyes wide and honour forgotten against this terrifying, bewildering enemy.
"No," she whispered. "Please, no…"
On the ridge, throwing his weight wildly into each swing, John batted away the creatures with her father's ceremonial club. There was no sign of her father except for his cloak on the ground, stained with sprays of dust from the defeated demons.
"John!" She ran towards him, mindless of the danger. She'd come to stop a battle and instead found a war.
He looked up, blood running into his eyes from a gash on his forehead. His face glowed when he spotted her, and for a moment his white-knuckled grip on the club relaxed. "Poca-"
She was two feet away when his chest erupted with black fingers. His back arched, mouth open in a silent cry, before he toppled forwards, revealing the creature behind him holding a tiny crystal heart.
"JOHN!"
Her scream made it quiver and release its prize, which floated into the sky and vanished in a flash of light. She ignored it, too focussed on John.
He was dead. Or at least, she thought so until she fell to her knees and dragged him towards her. His chest rose and fell, but his skin was clammy, his cheek cold to her touch. His eyes were open but held no spark. He'd become a strange, empty thing, and she felt like she'd drunk liquid fire that had burned away her heart and lungs. Those eyes were supposed to be complex and subtle, laughing one moment and serious the next. She'd fallen in love with those eyes.
"John, please. Wake up." She rested her head against his chest, heedless of anything but the impossibly absent rhythm of his heart. "I came to save you…"
The creature moved closer. It had feelers like a beetle, and these waved wildly when Meeko leapt over her shuddering, grieving form and cannoned into it with a protective chatter. A blue dot zipped after him, dive-bombing the luminous yellow eyes, and Percy gnawed its ankle with his teeth.
More animals surged from the forest, kicking, biting, butting, stamping and clawing at the creatures, as though all of nature recognised this threat and had sent its finest warriors to fight it. They swarmed onto the battlefield, and for a moment the tide turned. Then the black mass frothed over them, devouring them and leaving only empty shells.
A thunderous boom heralded a void like a raw wound in the sky. A rush of unnatural wind began picking up bodies, rocks, and even the huge ship out of its harbour. Birds were sucked into it, shrieking, and the men who'd fled flew as easily as birds themselves. Pocahontas saw her own encampment and the fort, a swathe of water that could only be the river, and screamed again when Grandmother Willow's recognisable bulk spiralled up into that evil mouth.
She was paralysed with confused horror, clinging onto John's body as more shadow-creatures advanced on her with hands outstretched as if to take her away from him.
An uprooted tree swept towards the ridge, smashing into it and pulverising everything on it.
And then there was only darkness.
Fin.